The Probable Future, by Alice Hoffman

Favorite authors gain my attention in unexpected ways. When I was a teenager my mother came home from the library one day with the second book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and suggested it was something I’d like. I began reading, smack in the middle of Frodo’s adventure, and I knew at once I had to read the entire trilogy. I also knew J. R. R. Tolkien would be a favorite author. Come to think of it, that was my introduction to the modern fantasy genre, in the form of a serendipitous teenage realization that Mom actually understood me a little.

I haven’t taken time lately to browse for hours in a bookstore or library, as I like to do. Instead I’ve acquired books by grabbing them as I rush down the aisle at the warehouse store or the supermarket. This isn’t the best method, and I recently quit reading two or three mysteries chosen this way, tossing them down in disinterest partway through. I find I’m partial neither to the author with the florescent paperback covers, nor the one whose name I keep confusing with someone else’s when I’m in a hurry. No need to name them here. I finish reading the books I like, and I only review books I finish.

Sometimes my haphazard method of selecting books pays off. I picked up The Probable Future while I dashed through a warehouse store shortly before Christmas. A crowd stood between the table full of books and me, so I reached my hand between metal baskets. My quick scan of the blurb on the back cover led me to think I’d found a mystery with a hint of the supernatural, but it isn’t a mystery in the genre sense at all. Its mystery goes deeper than whodunit, and characters come to life within its covers to enchant the reader, as does the entire fictitious New England town called Unity. I found a story I could savor.

The Sparrow family have lived in Unity almost since the town has existed, in an old house that’s been added on to so many times it’s assumed the shape of a wedding cake. The residents of Unity know it as Cake House, and its inhabitants present a mystery the townspeople don’t want to solve, or even have much to do with, in spite of the sacrifices the Sparrow women have made to the community through the past two centuries—or perhaps because of them.

Each Sparrow woman develops a unique gift at the age of thirteen, and these gifts aren’t necessarily blessings. Elinor Sparrow can tell when someone is lying. Her daughter Jenny can enter others’ dreams. Jenny’s daughter Stella, in her turn, wakens on her thirteenth birthday with the ability to see how some people will die. Her gift lands Stella’s father, Will Avery, in jail when he’s wrongly accused of murder after trying to warn the authorities about one of his daughter’s premonitions.

This is not a story of how the murder is solved. In fact, that becomes a minor detail. It’s a story about a family, a town, and how a much older mystery is brought to rest, of how the Sparrow women first came to live in Unity, the part they’ve played in its history, and where they’re headed. It isn’t packed with action, either. The reader enters the life of each character as one would enter the life of a new friend, easing one’s way in and beginning to see the world through the other’s eyes. The patient reader is rewarded by the full richness of Alice Hoffman’s writing. In the world of novelists, Hoffman is the equivalent of the dedicated cook who spends an entire day preparing a meal with love, creating everything from scratch, and possibly by magic. Other cooks open cans and stir up store-bought mixes, some toss everything into the microwave oven. They feed our stomachs, while the gifted cook—and author—feeds our souls.

When I began reading The Probable Future, I didn’t realize Alice Hoffman also wrote Practical Magic, the novel adapted a few years ago into a film of the same title, starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. This doesn’t come as a surprise, though. Practical Magic the movie is a favorite of mine, and now Alice Hoffman the author is a favorite as well.